Beginning this November you will start seeing my music paired with AdRev, the YouTube partner platform that utilizes digital fingerprinting technology and YouTube’s Content ID system to track, manage and administer copyrighted material on behalf of content creators and copyright holders.
This move may be seen as somewhat controversial as it means licensed music already existing in YouTube videos will need to be “re-cleared” for monetization to continue, and all new uploads will need to be “pre-cleared” to avoid the notices and enable monetization from the first view. This change in policy was not made lightly, however it is completely necessary and I will explain that in a moment.
Please understand that this move will in no way harm your account standing with YouTube. It simply displays a “matched third party content” notice (you’ll see this in your YouTube video manager next to videos matching a song that uses Content ID) and temporarily stops revenue collection from monetized videos until licenses are verified.
To find fraudulent uses, the system must check every video. As there is no way to tell who has a license before YouTube asks for one, legitimate users will need to pass this extra layer of security.
As a valid license holder you will be able to quickly and easily get rid of this notice (and monetization freeze) by following a few steps that I have outlined in detail in a new article: Understanding Content ID. The Understanding Content ID article will tell you everything you need to know about Content ID, AdRev, how to “clear” any claims made on your videos, best practices when uploading new videos and how the future will look moving forward on YouTube.
Why The Sudden Change In Content ID Policy
For a long time I measured the pros and cons of using content ID on my music and could not make up my mind. The major con was everything that I just mentioned above; that all of the music I had previously licensed to users on YouTube would have to get re-cleared by each licensee. As not everyone is familiar with the process, I was very concerned about the extra frustration it would easily cause as a notice popped up on each person’s YouTube account. While it’s just a notice (not to be confused with a strike against an account) I feared it would cause undue panic to customers.
Due to one particularly unfortunate event however, I found myself heavily in favor of registering my music. I had discovered that another company had been fraudulently claiming my music. I received a flood of e-mails about a notice on a particular song and I had no idea what was going on. Customers were trying to clear their music through this site, but as neither myself or King’s Crown Productions had actually registered the music, we could not clear claims. Lawyers are now involved.
The only way to remedy the situation and to avoid future problems was to register my material with AdRev.
Beyond this single incident, over time with success in music also came large scale copyright infringement. It has been a growing issue for a long period of time now and simply finally reached a tipping point where I could no longer ignore it.
Please understand that there really wasn’t a “best” time to pull the trigger on this. The longer I wait in fact, the more people this will affect. Thank you for your understanding and patience as we work together to re-clear all licensed videos.
Again, for much more information, please see Understanding Content ID.
There are no comments yet